Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers said yesterday that the Taipei City Government's press conference held to detail Mayor Ma Ying-jeou's (
"Since the allegations broke, Ma has come up with five or six different explanations [as to how he used the fund], each of which contradicted the other. That is the biggest problem with Ma: he has neither credibility nor integrity," DPP caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (
Ker said Ma's absence from the press conference suggested that he was afraid of facing questions because the explanation he had come up with was actually a fabrication.
Citing the data Ma previously disclosed to the public, another DPP caucus whip, Yeh Yi-chin (
Yeh said that Ma had previously said he had donated NT$47.74 million from the money left over from grants awarded to him when he ran in mayoral elections in 1998 and 2002, NT$3.6 million from his salary as a member of the National Assembly, NT$2.42 million in unused campaign funds and NT$16.5 million from his special allowance fund.
"These donations add up to NT$70.27 million. So why did the Taipei City Government tell us today that Ma had donated NT$68.09 million?" she asked.
There were many dubious aspects to the explanation offered by the Taipei City Government yesterday, especially because no details of the donations were revealed, she added.
"During the press conference, the [Taipei City Government] didn't disclose how much had been given to whom and at what time," Yeh said.
DPP Legislator Hsieh Hsin-ni (謝欣霓) said that some NT$15 million of the "NT$68.09 million" were donated after Ma came under investigation for embezzlement in late October.
Ma was accused of embezzling half of his mayoral fund, or NT$170,000 monthly, since he assumed office in 1998, totaling some NT$15 million.
"Ma said on May 19 that he had donated NT$53 million. But today we are told that the total amount he donated was NT$68.09 million. The discrepancy, NT$15 million, suggests that the donation of NT$53 million had nothing to do with his mayoral fund. He made the extra NT$15 million donation to cover-up his embezzlement," Hsieh said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching